John Sentamu’s Sunday service may be short

Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, may not continue to write a column
for The Sun's recently-launched Sunday edition, despite News International's
proclamation that he was 'joining the team'.

John SentamuPhoto: LEON NEAL/Getty

By Tim Walker

6:30AM GMT 28 Feb 2012

Rupert Murdoch may be about to lose his first big signing at the Sunday edition of The Sun. A spokesman for Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, yesterday cast doubt over whether his boss would be continuing to write a column for the tabloid.

“I can’t say if it will be a regular thing or not,” he told Mandrake. “It is not, however, the practice of the archbishop to write exclusively for any one newspaper.”

Murdoch’s News International had trumpeted that Sentamu was “joining the team” on the successor to the News of the World. This, coupled with the overtly commercial tone of the inaugural column, had, I am told, worried his advisers.

“The archbishop does not regard The Sun as his favourite paper,” his spokesman stressed. “It is true that the phrase 'the country’s favourite paper’ appeared in the column, but that should only be taken to mean the bestselling paper.”

In Sentamu’s Sunday Service, as the column was called, the archbishop also suggested that life would be “better” for people if they took the tabloid seven days a week.

Sentamu’s spokesman declined to name the fee that the column commanded - “our accountant is currently away for some weeks” - but said all the income that the archbishop derives from journalism goes to St Leonard’s Hospice in York, of which he is president.

The charity confirmed this, but its spokesman added that St Leonard’s had no wish to be drawn into territory that was “controversial.” News International, meanwhile, declined to comment.